Space Force review round-up: Critics find Steve Carell’s show a ‘pretty farce’

The Hollywood Reporter’s Daniel Fienberg wrote in his review, “Space Force just isn’t close to consistent — especially in the first half of the season, the misses outweigh the hits — and even as it settles into itself a little more, it’s hard to buy all of the eventual smoothing out of characters and plot lines from that choppy beginning.”

Variety’s Caroline Framke remarked that Space Force is “really just okay.” The review reads, “In his first regular comedic TV role since Michael Scott, Carell plays Mark Naird, a newly promoted four-star general who immediately has to prove his worth by making Space Force a workable reality. Mark is either a meek rule obsessive or an arrogant blowhard depending on what any particular scene feels like indulging, but Carell gives him a strange gravelly growl of a voice throughout.”

“But when Space Force tries to go bigger or more inspiring with its plot, it buckles under the weight of its own ambition. It creeps along as the branch makes vanishingly little progress before suddenly lurching it forward to land on the moon,” Framke added.

Indiewire’s Ben Travers’ wrote in his review, “Carell’s sitcom return isn’t Netflix’s Michael Scott Paper Company to NBC’s The Office, or even a Veep-like political satire, but instead a very pretty farce.”

It further read, “It’s a farce and, at most, a light satire when it comes to politics. Despite sharing a name with the American military’s newest and most widely ridiculed branch, Carell and Daniels only take mild pokes at their characters’ odd patriotic obligation — and the President who felt it necessary to make space our next ‘war-fighting domain’ in the first place.”

Space Force also stars John Malkovich, Ben Schwartz, Lisa Kudrow and Diana Silvers.